European elections in the Netherlands in 2009
The European elections in the Netherlands in 2009 took place on June 4, 2009. It was carried out in the course of the EU- wide European elections in 2009 , with 25 of the 736 seats in the European Parliament in the Netherlands . After the Treaty of Lisbon came into force in 2011, another Dutch MEP moved to Parliament.
Electoral system and eligible voters
The election was based on proportional representation with preferential votes in a nationwide constituency . There was the possibility of list connections . The allocation of mandates to the (affiliated) party lists took place according to the D'Hondt procedure . The assignment of mandates to the various lists within a connection was carried out according to the Hare / Niemeyer procedure .
For the first time, citizens of the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba were also eligible to vote. As the overseas territories of the Netherlands, these are not part of the European Union ; however, a judgment by the Dutch Council of State ruled that discrimination against Dutch nationals inside and outside mainland Europe was unconstitutional. Previously, only Dutch people who had lived on the continent for at least ten years were allowed to vote. The new regulation added around 210,000 eligible voters, of which only around 21,000 actually entered the electoral register. In addition, for the first time, people under guardianship were eligible to vote . For the first time, voting computers were no longer used for counting votes after their security against manipulation was questioned.
Campaigning parties
A total of seventeen party lists ran for election, seven of which were previously represented in the European Parliament. The Europa Transparant party , which had won two MEPs in the 2004 European elections , did not run.
Since the D'Hondt process slightly favors larger parties at the expense of smaller parties, various parties with a similar orientation came together. The two Christian parties ChristenUnie and SGP entered with a common list called ChristenUnie / SGP . Other parties formed list connections :
- the Christian Democratic CDA with ChristenUnie / SGP ,
- the liberal parties VVD and D66 ,
- the social democratic PvdA with the green GroenLinks .
In fact, the list connection between the PvdA and GroenLinks meant that the latter won an additional seat that would otherwise have gone to the PVV . The remaining compounds had no effect on the end result.
Results
The turnout was 36.9% and was thus below the European average (43.1%) and also below the turnout in the 2004 European elections (39.3%).
The Christian Democratic CDA lost slightly compared to 2004, but again became the strongest party with five seats. The biggest winner of the election was the right-wing populist PVV, which ran for the first time and immediately became the second largest party. The D66 also won votes. The most important loser in the election was the PvdA, which lost almost half of its share of the vote. Incidentally, precisely those parties that had been part of Parliament since 2004 were able to move back into it; The SGP won a seat for the first time through the joint list with the ChristenUnie.
In detail, the parties achieved the following results:
| list | be right | percent | Change in percentage points | Seats | change | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Political party | European party | EP Group | |||||||
| Christian-Democratic Appèl | EPP | EPP | 913.233 | 20.1% | −4.3 | 5 | −2 | ||
| Partij voor de Vrijheid | - | - | 772.746 | 17.0% | +17.0 | 4th | +4 | ||
| Partij van de Arbeid | SPE | S&D | 548.691 | 12.1% | −11.6 | 3 | −4 | ||
| Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie | ELDR | ALDE | 518,643 | 11.4% | −1.8 | 3 | −1 | ||
| Democrats 66 | ELDR | ALDE | 515,422 | 11.3% | +7.1 | 3 | +2 | ||
| GroenLinks | EGP | Greens / EFA | 404.020 | 8.9% | +1.5 | 3 | +1 | ||
| Socialist Partij | - | GUE / NGL | 323.269 | 7.1% | +0.1 | 2 | ± 0 | ||
| ChristenUnie - SGP | - | ECR / EFD | 310,540 | 6.8% | +0.9 | 2 | ± 0 | ||
| Partij voor de Dieren | - | 157.735 | 3.5% | +0.3 | 0 | ± 0 | |||
| Europese klokkenluiderspartij | - | 21,448 | 0.5% | +0.5 | 0 | ± 0 | |||
| Newropeans | - | 19,840 | 0.4% | +0.4 | 0 | ± 0 | |||
| Libertas | Libertas | EVS | 14,612 | 0.3% | +0.3 | 0 | ± 0 | ||
| Liberaal Democratische Partij | - | 10,757 | 0.2% | +0.2 | 0 | ± 0 | |||
| De Groenen | EGP | Greens / EFA | 8,517 | 0.2% | +0.2 | 0 | ± 0 | ||
| Solidara | - | 7,533 | 0.2% | +0.2 | 0 | ± 0 | |||
| Europe Voordelig! & Duurzaam | - | 4,431 | 0.1% | +0.1 | 0 | ± 0 | |||
| Partij voor Europese Politiek | - | 2,427 | 0.1% | +0.1 | 0 | ± 0 | |||
| Total number of valid votes | 4,553,864 | 100 | 25th | -2 | |||||
| Invalid votes | 9,866 | ||||||||
| Blank ballot paper | 10,013 | ||||||||
| Total number of votes cast | 4,573,743 | ||||||||
| Eligible voters | 12,378,500 | ||||||||
| voter turnout | 36.9% | ||||||||
Allocation of parties to parliamentary groups in the European Parliament
While most of the Dutch parties rejoined the groups in the European Parliament to which they had previously belonged, even after the election, difficulties arose for the ChristenUnie party. Before the election, the parliamentary group had belonged to the Independence and Democracy parliamentary group, which after the election no longer fulfilled the conditions for founding a parliamentary group and dissolved. ChristenUnie and SGP therefore entered into negotiations with the founders of the newly founded conservative parliamentary group ECR . However, they asked the SGP to change their positions on gender equality before joining a parliamentary group , which the SGP refused. ChristenUnie then joined the ECR group alone, while the SGP joined the Eurosceptic group EFD .
The representatives of the PVV elected to the European Parliament for the first time remained non-attached .
Allocation of the 26th seat under the Lisbon Treaty
According to the Lisbon Treaty , which only came into force during the 2009–14 electoral term, the Netherlands was allowed to send one more member to the European Parliament. According to the election results, the PVV was entitled to this 26th seat. On September 13, 2011, Auke Zijlstra took the additional seat.
However, the allocation of the seat was controversial. The proposal by the Dutch State Secretary Ank Bijleveld-Schouten , according to which the additional seat should be allocated based on the results of the 2009 election, had not yet been officially approved by the Dutch Parliament at the time of the election. Therefore, after the election, the Partij voor de Dieren (PvdD) objected to the fact that the ministry had not taken into account certain arguments of the Dutch electoral authority that the 26th seat would go to the PvdD. Several parties in the Dutch parliament spoke out against this position of the PvdD, as it implies a subsequent change in the electoral rules. Eventually the matter was brought up to the State Council , which is supposed to answer the question.
Controversy over the publication of the election results
A controversy eventually arose over the publication of the Dutch election results. The 2009 European elections lasted a total of four days (from June 4th to 7th), with the Netherlands voting on the first possible day. According to the European Commission , however, the election results from all member states should be published at the same time, on the one hand to emphasize the uniformity of the European elections and on the other hand to prevent the election being influenced by the results already known in other member states.
In fact, the Dutch government did not initially announce any official election results. However, as in the 2004 European elections , all the individual municipalities published their respective results on the evening of June 4th, so that - with the exception of the postal votes cast abroad - the media could calculate the result by simple addition. In fact, media in all European countries reported the result there immediately after the Dutch elections.
In the next few days, other states also did not follow the rule not to publish any election results before the last polling stations close at 10 p.m. on June 7th. In Germany , for example, after the German polling stations closed on June 7th at 6 p.m., the first projections were published based on polls on election day , which provided very precise information about the results. However, the Netherlands was the only country in which official census results were actually published in advance.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Verkiezingsuitslagen Europees Parlement 2009 - Nederland Kiesraad. Databank Verkiezingsuitlagen
- ↑ See results of the election on the website of the Dutch electoral authority ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (as PDF and in Dutch).
- ^ De Telegraaf , June 11, 2009: PvdA: Restzetel is voor PVV (Dutch).
- ↑ NRC, June 12, 2009: Tweede Kamer wil advies Raad van State om 26th zetel ( Memento of the original of July 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Dutch).
- ^ For example n-tv.de, June 5, 2009: Shift to the right in the Netherlands .
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